Coming from one of the distinguished acting families of
the Polish stage and screen, Wroblewski fled Poland with his
parents when the rumors of a German invasion circulated through
Warsaw. His parents were prevented from a more substantial career in
American films by their heavily accented speech, but Wroblewski came
to the U.S. as a young man, learned to speak like an American, and by
the end of the war was acting in juvenile roles in small
second-feature films. The critics called him the "grade B Roddy
McDowell". The great film critic of another day, James Agee,
elaborated: "Wroblewski, in fact, could easily be mistaken for
McDowell, except that he is really tall, and has a very deep voice,
and is a big bulky guy, and has no acting talent whatsoever"

His first Hollywood film
was The Battlin' Bellhops, a partially
fictionalized story about the legendary 603rd Airborne, which played
such an important role in the liberation of Luxembourg. All of the
members of that brave battalion of enlistees were former hotel bellmen,
and most were just
barely old enough to serve, yet they became lionized not only for
their courage in battle, but for their steadfast unwillingness to
accept tips from the liberated populations. They always stirred the
Europeans when they marched into liberated towns wearing their little
round red caps in lieu of standard military headgear. Wroblewski had
the supporting role of Skeeter, the naive German-American kid from Brooklyn who
got separated from his unit and was mistakenly shot by an American
sentry. The MP heard Skeeter speaking German to the locals and became
convinced he was a spy, a suspicion which turned into certainty when
Skeeter could not correctly identify the name
of the famous Brooklyn baseball team. His crusty "sarge" delivered the
funeral oration, in which he declared Skeeter to be "a swell kid, and
a real great American, even though he obviously wasn't much of a baseball fan."

Wroblewski also had a small role in the sequel,
One Battlin' Bellhop, a short film about one
member of the squad who continued his fighting ways after the war, but
this time in the ring. This was based on the true story of Lefty "Big Ears" McGurk, pride of the 603rd,
who was at one time the number three contender for the world flyweight title.
Wroblewski played Skeeter in flashback scenes.

The big break that briefly launched Wroblewski to national
prominence came just after the war when Bud Abbot fell suddenly ill
before a big USO show in New York. Young Gregory jumped out of the chorus
and
told Lou Costello that he knew the part by heart, ultimately
allowing the show to go on, and bringing joy to a war-weary America. In the
skit, Wroblewski played General McArthur, and Costello played a
grateful native Filipino. Their hilarious exchange of dialogue in the
classic "Luzon First" skit is still
played on TV time and again when the history of American wartime
comedy is told.

Unfortunately, this youthful walk-on would be the
highlight of his career. The end of the war signified the
virtual end of Wroblewski's chances to break into A pictures. The real
actors like Jimmy Stewart came back from Uncle Sam to Hollywood, so
Wroblewski abandoned his dreams of stardom and resigned himself to
using acting as a way to fill the table for his family. He acted in
several additional
sequels to the Battlin' Bellhop movies, always playing Skeeter in
flashbacks, and he picked up whatever other work was available.
Eventually, unable to break into top-line films, Wroblewski's career
faltered with the disappearance of second features in the 60's, but
his grade-b legacy is writ proud.

Film name

Year

Role

A Bullet For Lassie

1947

Timmy

Broadway Bimbos of 1947

1947

Band Singer

The Absent-Minded Bombardier

1948

Skeeter

The Shaggy Nun

1949

Li'l Scoopy

Air Raid Nurse

1950

Skeeter

Advice to the Stupid

1951

Bobo

I Was a Teenage Commie

1952

Komrade Grishka

Big Hand for a Little Caesar

1953

The dealer

Abe Lincoln in Chains

1954

John Wilkes Booth

Run Silent, Run Amuck

1955

Skeeter

Portrait of a Teenage Person

1956

Ox, the Soda Jerk

More Advice to the Stupid

1957

Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Assault on a Manger

1958

Skeeter

Snow White and the Seven Samurai

1959

Grumpy-san

Along Came Jesus

1960

"Doubting" Thomas

Apache Beach Party

1961

Running Scared

The Big Crustacean that Swallowed
Parts of Denver

1962

TV Reporter

My Breakfast With The Hell's Angels

1963

Manny Three Legs

The Cowpokes of Wimpole Street

1963

Gabby/Lord Gabman

Fear Hits a Ground Rule Double

1964

Coach Cleats McGillicuddy

Hot Rod Drag Strip Sluts Go
Hawaiian

1964

Ukulele Bailey

Night of the Living Bra

1965

Skeeter's Corpse

Hercules vs the Bad News Bears

1966

Coach Cleats McGillicuddy

Is it in yet, Charlie Brown?

1967

Schroeder (voice)

Sauna on Blood Island

1967

The Finn

Sauna Zombies in Zoot Suits

1968

The Finn

Blood on Sauna Island

1968

The Finn

Le dernier bellhop (fr)

1968

Skeeter pere (flashbacks), Skeeter
fils

Swamp Chicken

1968

Colonel Francis Scoopy, the Swamp
Chicken

Wilderness Chicken

1969

Colonel Francis Scoopy, the Swamp
Chicken

Crystal Blue Strawberry Love

1969

The Radio Mime

Whatever Happened to Whoever That
Was?

1970

Eliot Gould

From 1970 until 1987, Wroblewski
was in business, out of the entertainment world, and eventually ran
various small to medium sized corporations until his retirement. When he stepped
down as head of Wonder Salt, after managing it to the #5 spot among
American salts, he re-entered show business as the head writer and
sometime performer in the syndicated TV series,
The Abominable Showman. The show lasted two seasons, after
which Wroblewski moved to Hungary and attempted to open up an Eastern
European division of Wonder Salt, with only sporadic success.

He's now superannuated and should be slowing down, but
his complete lack of talent kept him from suffering any diminution of
skills with age, so he now rides the internet as "Uncle" Scoopy, a
character named after his greatest lead role, the Revolutionary War
figure, Colonel Francis Scoopy, better known to subsequent generations
of schoolchildren as The Swamp Chicken. Although Col. Scoopy and his
men never fired a single shot, many historians say that their small
battalion kept the British from absolute victory in the South with
their "rope-a-dope" strategy of running away from the redcoats until
the Brits simply got tired of following. Washington's devious strategy
called for Scoopy's Chickens to exhaust the English, so that the
regular Continental army could defeat them.

Most of you probably remember the theme song from their two movies.
Along with The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island, it is one of the
three best-remembered theme songs in entertainment history.